WhatsApp touches 20 million users in India, to roll out voice message service

New Delhi: Popular mobile instant messaging service WhatsApp has claimed to have around 20 million monthly active users in India amongst the global user base of 300 million. The popular IM service is also coming up with push-to-talk voice messaging service, which would let the users send and receive voice messages in real time along with ability to play the audio files without having any limit or duration.

It has also been learnt that the user base mark of 20 million has exceeded in several countries like Germany, Mexico and Spain, apart from India. The users also send 11 billion messages and receive close to 20 billion messages every day. WhatsApp Chief Executive Officer Jan Koum further said that 325 million images are shared everyday on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is also planning to introduce the push-to-talk voice messaging service in the all-popular application on all mobile platforms including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windown Phone and Nokia (Series 40 and Symbian).

Though, WhatsApp allows its users to send messages of limited duration of 2 minutes on iPhone app as an attachment, one needs to go through a number of steps which includes recording the message and sending it. And what appears completely to be out of sync is the audio message needs to be played through a default audio player.

The push-to-talk feature, however, will allow the users record message with single tap and one will just have to press the microphone button, placed next to compose box. The users will just have to release the ‘record’ button before sending the message and in case one wishes not to send the message, a swipe towards left will do the job.

There will be no duration limit for the voice message unlike the audio notes feature and the message will be played via the device or an earphone. Besides, a blue microphone will let the user know if the message has been played, just like two checkmates indicate that the message has been delivered.

The voice message feature is likely to be available for the global users within WhatsApp and its other popular counterparts like Voxer and WeChat also offers similar voice chat features.